


companion

by oddopus



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bill being a lil bitch, Dipper being dead, F/F, Gen, M/M, Mabel being the adult, OOC?, Pacifica being hot, mabel-major, no beta butcher the english language like a masochist b, sadness do weird things to people idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 17:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21275228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddopus/pseuds/oddopus
Summary: Mabel sat in the hospital room of her brother, diagnosed to very SURELY be dead. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.At first Mabel dealt with his death. Then she finds him. Then she dealt.





	companion

The white noise of machines dampened the atmosphere like a midsummer’s heatwave. The constant beeping weaved itself into the sterilely ill smell of a hospital. Mabel Pines stared at the empty shell of her brother on the bed with burning stings in her eyes that felt like they were on the verge of melting inside the lava pool of her head and into the ground. She stared with the patience of a statue, not in the manner that marble stands war and time but in the manner that those had been carved and polished, lifeless and will stay as such until it forms turn to dust. That head of hers had grown tiresome as the days worn her lonely being.  
  
Brown eyes momentarily closed. And in a blink which she thought may have last hours and eternities, lost sleep caught up and lured Mabel with a sweet dull noise in her brain. When she forced herself back to reality, though, light flooded her sight and, on the bed, the figure that was no longer there made her thought this may have been a fever dream after all.  
  
The sudden realization soaked her. From head to toes, Mabel felt like drowning in freezing water. She turned her head frantically and yelled out his name yet the creaky feeling in her bone told her she had been truly left alone. But not quite. Mabel isn’t sure. It just sure felt like alone.  
  
_  
  
What had happened she did not know and willingly admitted so, with great shame. But what good’s in searching for an essentially dead man? or so she was told. Problem is Mabel didn’t know how to hold a funeral without death and she didn’t.  
  
On one particular weekend, she drove to the city Dipper used to live and conduct his mystic research, if not to collect his things on the notice of the landlord, then to gather her fleeting wits since his disappearance. A layer of dust had settled though the scene left behind by Dipper was still animated with a fervent and curious life that once occupied the place. Mabel invited herself to the scattering notes laid out on the table only to never be collected and sorted again. With much use and perhaps keenness, Dipper’s sketched had gotten better since she last paid attention. Mabel briefly entertained the thought that perhaps Dipper had found a spark of joy in his illustration on the side of his enchantment with myths. She understood rarely his scribbling and much less his slow and apparent transition to cryptic symbols in the note. Those flooded her head and broke a dam somewhere that invited waves of childhood memories.  
  
One in particular brought great entertainment and nostalgia, the time she was draped in her Neverland dream by a demonic yellow triangle. A pang of regret stabbed Mabel’s organs. She gathered what she could of his notes and left the rest for the cleaning service scheduled by the landlord. This should be the last she would ever see of this place. Mabel glanced over the cleared desk and she could tell how hunched her twin once was over the table nearby. But he was no longer anywhere.  
  
Still, Mabel studied his notes like they were fountain water in an endless desert. The obsession warped her mind into the ninth dimension and the mantra that she once hypnotized her heart with, he was no longer anywhere, suddenly seemed a little bit doubtful. Surely among all the mysticism in the world, god would have spared a little miracle for her brother and surely, he had begun an adventure somewhere the secret of the universe dwelled. She juggled the thought playfully and clumsily with absolutely no viable evidence but the unsated loneliness in her heart.  
  
Mabel basked in the light of days as brightly as she was destined to be but in the night when she set her hair loose to sleep, her long lock of brown hair felt a little bit more weighted on her head, shoulder and her lower back. Her hair seemed to pull her body to sink down into the mattress and pull the tear out of her eyes. She looked out the window at the diluted lights from some condos nearby, knowing that none of those lights guiding the non-sleeping to dawn will shine on her brother somewhere because his writings were right here with her and he was not. For the first time since given the shared gift of life, Mabel was lone in the wide world which is a bit too wide and a bit too lacking of one person.  
  
One night, coming back from a long day at work, Mabel stepped into her place and as she unzipped her clothes, a wave of fresh determination washed over her. It was a moment of drunkenness, really. She changed clothes quickly and with a bag packed full of Dipper’s noted and some spare clothing, Mabel shut the door to her place without turning back.  
  
She wanted a funeral. Just, not enough delusions had set in yet.  
  
_  
  
In the long hours that she drove, Mabel thought of the people of Gravity Falls. The memories were ancient enough for her to feel like they were characters fresh out of an urban fairy tale. The tips of her fingers grew cold as the images of her brother blended among those people with the same fantasy quality though she continued to grip the wheel. She thought of the last few months of fabricated tranquility and she couldn’t believe herself. Perhaps the shock had truly dimmer her wit. Where else would she ever find her brother but in the depth of the forest of Gravity Falls?  
  
_  
  
She detected the sign of Gravity Falls at an ungodly hour and drove towards the once Mystery Shack. The abandoned look suited the place, frankly. Fleeting memories were the days and now she stood, mourning the past for a moment in time. The door was lock tight and Mabel was clueless as to what she was going to do from here. Perhaps she should walk straight into the forest. But if the summer at Gravity Falls taught her anything, it’s not to meddle with those in the dark on their clock. Her body wanted rest, she suspected, as it had been for months now.  
  
She wandered back into town. The dim light of a bar invited her in for a drink, which she accepted. A familiar face greeted her without a hint of recognition, perhaps an itch of distasteful for an arrival at such unpreferable hour. Pacifica looked unsuited tending a bar. The customer’s side of the counter would have been a more familiar look on her.  
  
Mabel requested a random drink or two.  
  
“I guess you didn’t remember?” chuckled Mabel. She pondered momentarily the possibilities of what could have transpired with the Northwest since. The question only invited doubtful look from the blonde.  
  
“Mabel Pines?” hinted Mabel. At the name slipped, she came to detect a faint distasteful scowl between her companion’s eyes, suggesting a muted ding in Pacifica’s brain.  
  
“Oh yes, it’s been awfully long.” Pacifica squinted her eyes, though it’s difficult for Mabel to tell the reason for in the dim-lit bar. “You look dead”, added Pacifica. Frankly, Mabel might as well be.  
  
“And you look nice and sweet, Pacifica. As ever.”  
  
A dull silence followed. Mabel’s stomach was slowly curling into a black mass. An overwhelming terror scorched her mind as the thought that Pacifica would ask of Dipper next. She felt like a soul separate from her body, watching it engulfed in invisible flame.  
  
“Anyway, do you know who has the key to Mystery Shack these days? I can’t get in” Mabel’s voice seemed to operate independently from her turmoil of a gut. She gulfed down a bit of alcohol in hope that the liquid would smoothen her patchy throat and her borderline non-existent body.  
  
“Ah yes. You siblings used to live in that hellhole, didn’t you? Wrinkly and swindling.”  
  
“No other hellhole like it” interjected Mabel, a bit too abruptly. The sardonic bite of Pacifica’s words was dripping on Mabel’s psych but also deeply felt like a welcome-home. “Well?”  
  
Pacifica squinted further. “Try breaking the damn door then.”  
  
“Very quality suggestion, Pacifica. Will take.” Mabel wagged with her index finger in the bartender’s general direction and raised the glass a little high to cover the corner of her mouth lifted by an entertained smirk. In her role as a customer, Mabel reached for her wallet and paid. The haze of the conversation and alcohol had rendered her an adventurer and warm breath of hope filled her lung. Pacifica turned to take the money away. From her unhalted back, Mabel caught a faint breathy line – “welcome back.”  
  
Pacifica turned to face Mabel abruptly “Now be gone with you, foul little pumpkin.” She waved her hand in a dismissive manner toward the exit, fully aware Mabel was enchanted by the movement of her hand.  
  
“Good night, Pacifica. It’s been a warm welcome.” And with that, Mabel closed the door after her. So strange was the fact that Dipper wasn’t quite brought up the whole reunion.  
  
_  
  
With a freshly bought axe, Mabel began to chomp down at the creaky old door and with every swing, she could see her childhood memories rewind, guided only by the cluelessness of the desperate. Mabel knew not what to do next, only that whatever she wanted to begin with, it had to be from the Mystery Shack.  
  
It was easy labour considering the wood had been worn down by years of negligence. Mabel stepped through and she strolled through the hall towards the secret basement. Each step bringing her closer to her intended destination, she also felt a strange familiar in the air, mixed with dusty and dampen wood smell. Suddenly, it was warm and fresh. The door to the basement was open. Hope ignited firework in her heart and spasm in her muscles. Images of her brother hunching over papers and weird shits sprouted non-stop everywhere her eyes set on. It’s so near, she could feel.  
  
She ran down the stair as though pulled by a magnet and her body no longer her own. Her brain screamed no, don’t descend further but still she heard the loud thud of her shoes on the old stairs. Then her brain also creamed yes, yes, just a little more. Brother.  
  
Among all the old machines and scattered papers once filled the room with entitlement now discarded to the side, Dipper Pines sat, perfectly still.  
  
In a glass case.  
  
Mabel halted. She thought it’s some kind of joke.  
  
_  
  
What are the chances? Mabel wasn’t very good at math so, frankly, she didn’t know. She leveled her breathing for a moment. Dipper looked restful. Mabel stood still and stared like a hawk that night at the hospital. She couldn’t understand a thing. Mabel was born not the patience one but still she waited because, for the first time since the night at the hospital, she realized not a thing had changed and she, still, could only wait.  
  
_  
  
“I see you have found him, Shooting Star.” Mabel needed not a single glance to know whose echoing voice that would be. This town raised excessive nostalgias for her.  
  
The appearance of the omnipotent demon shattered her glass of a mind. Mabel was afraid of blinking.  
  
“And I will take him back, demon.” The last syllable turned into a growl, cuing the last drip of humanity in Mabel to thaw and morph into a senseless beast. She lunged herself at the glass case, dragging the axe on the ground with her. The gleam of the sharper edge shone with the fleeting light from the surrounding machines, turning into a strip as Mabel strike the case.  
  
With a loud thud, the axe collided with the glass, bouncing back the same blunt force it was launched. The figure inside still sat, undisturbed. Mabel still struck and struck and struck again. In the still of the night, only the clashing noises and heaving occupied the air. However, human’s strength was so limited, and Mabel’s body was tired from all these times. The splitting crashes melted away into a futile and dim sob. Mabel tried to take a long breath but the moment the cool air touched filled her blood, her legs crumbled like dust and a violent cry shook her body. Give him back. And so she mourned.  
  
_  
  
“He is already dead, Shooting Star. Go back, do whatever it is human need to do and go on with your life.” Echoed Bill from the distance. Mabel can’t really discern the demon with her blurry eyes anymore. So he’s dead for real?  
  
“For real.”  
  
“well. It’s time to go back, bro. We have a funeral to hold.” whispered Mabel into the cool surface of the glass case. There’s only so much one can pull oneself together looking as much a wreck as she was and felt. She tried knocking on the case. It made small clear sound quite low in pitch. Not necessarily waiting for an answer, Mabel just sat out her unrelenting exhaust and need for the comfort from the other half of her being.  
  
“No” echoed Bill, though Mabel ignored. “He will stay.”  
  
Mabel lazed against the case for a moment. She gazed upon the demon for the first time in the long years since her childhood. Oh, the thing a demon will say.  
  
“You are not taking him anywhere, Shooting Star.” Sounds erupted in all of her five senses and a few more senses she wasn’t aware human had. A mild annoyance swollen from the pit of her stomach which Mabel tried desperately to ignore in favor of the tranquility she had hunted for months. “And why would that be, demon?” She spat the word like a curse and with as much malice she could muster in her sleepy daze.  
  
“That is MINE now!” the spoiled demon huffed frantically as if Mabel were the most blockheaded creature in all dimensions of the universe and beyond.  
  
“Shoo, demon. Go bitching to some cults.” Mabel fondly replicated Pacifica’s wave of hand, indubitably with much less grace than her. The pupil widened and Mabel felt like being hit with a blunt force to the side of the room before she collapsed on the floor like a ragdoll. Bill’s power seemed to have fleshed out over the year, for this power she didn’t remember the demon possessed. The moonlight peer through a ground window, drafting over the two figures previously engulfed in darkness.  
  
Mabel peeked through her wincing eyes to a streak of darkness on the floor between the two long streaks of light. Her back touched the cold floor for a moment. She blinked and thought to herself for a minute, peered over cautiously and a little bit curiously by the demon. Bill had a shadow now, thought Mabel. What are the implications? That the world is going to end, possibly. But Mabel could not hold onto another apocalypse for long. Her brother sitting there was too much of a coincidence for her to play oblivion the shadow business. She thought but still couldn’t figure it out and for that moment, she so wished her brother was laying there beside her descripting the intricacies of the world. Instead, she couldn’t think very well. The clues the universe had laid out before her eyes rammed into and wove tightly with each other. She was born with another part to think for her but now that’s long gone and all she could ever do anymore was to be caught in a messy net.  
  
“Demon, make a deal with me.” whispered Mabel.  
  
“And what may I interest you with?” replied the irritated demon.  
  
“Brin-”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why?” Mabel felt her own frown forming and her patience drifting.  
  
“The corpse can walk but what’s dead is dead. Or would you interest in a crocodile inhabit your brother’s body? That would make for good comedy, Shooting Star.” The usual echo merged into one line of voice and with an even volume Mabel ‘s used to hearing from a decent human. Still, she laid on the floor pondering.  
  
“Don’t trick people into deals anymore?” laughed Mabel airlessly. She was paid no replies. The still of the night and the strangeness of the situation dawned on her.  
  
“A meat sack needs no consent. I can take Pinetree’s meat sack if I want to.” Stated the demon with the witty composure of a confident lawyer stating a clause sealing his arguments.  
  
“And I will take him back and lay him to rest.” It’s only fair, was Mabel to be honest. She brought home to him great troubles and worries through the years they shared their lives and now it should be her turn to pay back.  
  
“NO” roared the demon. The echoed syllable rang Mabel’s ear drum into her brain. Images flooded her mind.  
  
-Bill stood in a trance. Trains of thoughts echoed in space. Surely the human existence is just a tad too fleeting for his liking. And with a wisp of air, the body of Dipper Pines disappeared into the night.  
  
With a flick in the general direction of the room, a chair formulates in the middle of the trashed room. He set Dipper on the chair and then lowered to the level of Dipper’s knee. Sharp canine teeth sprouted from the eyelids of Bill Cipher as he chomped down the pinky finger of the serene man. There’s a wince on Dipper’s face, suggesting a level of cognition left though not for long. As Bill munched the finger with his pupil, blood dripped from Dipper’s hand, now missing a finger and bloodied, messy and a thin blob of shadow form beneath the air Bill floated on. Bill watched him earnestly, as the trail of blood thin and the faint motion of his chest lessened. A snapping sound erupted in the still air and glass entrapped Dipper, soothing his sleep for an eternity. Except it’s not sleep because he’s dead.  
  
Still, Bill talked and jabbed, to a vessel that needed not listen. It’s like time rewound back to a distant summer settled in the dusk of the sun. This universe is constructed in a way that not even its omnipotent creator can allow Bill to relish endlessly in the long past. Humanity in its entirety is merely a brief existence in compare to the anciency of Bill Cipher. Still every time a race happened to earn a bit more intelligence, Bill grew intrigued. He wanted to relieve the Mindscape into this realm of course sometimes. Other times, the demon sat and watched. It wasn’t until Dipper that Bill had wanted a companion to brandish his evil mastermind and to flaunt the crypts of the universe with. He blinked one day. And suddenly Bill was floating on the deathbed of hid supposedly witness-to-crime. The worn face of the once blindingly bright Shooting Star guarded Dipper like a hawk on a dying prey. Bill knew if he blinked once more, the entirety of humanity would be over and when he opened his eyes, he will be floating in solitude in numbing space again, discluding the sorry excuses of the underling wrecks he controlled sometimes.  
  
In an act of rare rationale and clarity, Bill whisked Dipper away.-  
  
Mabel’s brain throbbed with vigor and senses she hadn’t thought capable of the organ. The multilinear musings of Bill Cipher were a rough haggle for a human brain.  
  
“This-” Bill pointed at the big dipper mark “-means he was made for me.”  
  
“He was made for none but himself. And those are nothing but a bunch of bullying materials growing up.” Mabel smiled fondly.  
  
“Don’t take him away.” Bill had those black strings of arms elongated to wrap several times around the cases now.  
  
“Then what’s about me, you wreck excuse of a demon?” sniffled Mabel. She knew not how those thoughts dwells inside Bill but, with her, Mabel still felt a dull lull as she floated through the universe with only solitude to entertain herself left over.  
  
“You and your kind will be gone soon enough.” Stressed the demon impatiently. Mabel hated being treated like an idiot. She needed no reminders. “Or I could end-” Bill snapped his finger, ”-it all right now.”  
  
Mabel realized with the snap sound that Bill had flesh now and was perfectly capable of tearing the current world a new rift. She realized how doomed she should have felt only to be surprised that the least of the emotions stirred her inside was terror.  
  
“Give him to me.” Mabel detected a faint familiar sound of her brother in the demon’s voice. It had consumed the flesh of Dipper after all. The pleasing edge, on the other hand, was rubbing the ego inside to which Mabel was previously oblivious. But she was in dire need of a funeral. Or that would face her on her return would be lengthened years of tormented and half-baked business until the day she would lay rest far longer into the future in solitude than she would have prefer.  
  
“Consider this a tomb then, Shooting Star. May as well be.” The whisper of the demon is sweet in her ears. Now Mabel can see how so many human were and would be tempted and the honey-dripping words of demonic entities. Though honestly, it seemed fitting. Mabel wove her hand atop her stomach. This town, like all declining towns littered across the country, will eventually come to be deserted. The Mystery Shack, the final reunion of all her childhood kin which the siblings hadn’t known at the time of parting that that would be the last, baked a lifetime of curiosity and adventure for the twins, bringing them two grunkles who loved them very dearly to the last breath breathed. Perhaps Mabel was truly alone in the world but the warmth of family surrounding draped over her like a warm blanket. She glanced towards her brother-once-was. Bill noticed soon and interrupted her line of vision with a hint of scowl he could manage with one giant eye.  
  
She pondered how Bill will continue to live. Perhaps a moment in time faraway, Bill would sit on a chair across Dipper. He would snap the glass case back to inexistence and, being more accustomed to a human vessel, he would whisper with hope and desperation that he wouldn’t want a meat sack only anymore. And with a snap, the figure of Dipper would crumble into fine dust and flew into the open sky, bearing the promise of a reunion further down the passage of time.  
  
Mabel mustered the courage of a reckless tyrant and, in a long while, blinked.  
  
_  
  
“Mum, where cha going?” the little girl tucked on Mabel’s sleeve as she’s about to leave the door. Time had been lenient on Mabel, as it had been on all those calm and loved. Mabel’s face lightened softly into a small smile as she replied, “Just a short visit. You go help Ma, okay? I’ll be back before dinner.”  
  
“I want to go! Ma Paz called me a dipshit!” Mabel couldn’t tell very well the relation between the two ideas but she had learned to not question the phrasing and the mind of a child. She remembered fondly the long hours she spent chatting the night away with Pacifica, until the heavy eyelids of hers revealed her foul characters and the penchant for fiendish languages she had formed from the years they grew up apart. It’s an endearing quality but still a questionable quality for a parent.  
  
“Sweetheart, c’mon. Go inside. Help Ma, yeah?” Mabel tried her best to wrangle with the stubborn child spiked with seemingly unbounded energy. She noticed from the corner of her eyes the red streaks of lights crowning the horizon, urging her to be speedy with her affairs. Reluctantly, she tried claiming the last words and bolted out the gate before the child could sneak back a comment.  
  
Mabel stalked along the trail, which was slowly sinking into the woody forest. She had worn down the road with her footsteps ever since moving back to Gravity Falls with Pacifica and, religiously, visiting the wreck of a Mystery Shack every week the weather allowed. As the shape of Mystery Shack peaked into her vision, she could hear endless chattering and snickering  
  
“-As I was saying, -Oh, Shooting Star.” The demon called her from a bit too far away. Age had worn her after all and her athleticism would no longer bear to serve the way it once did. She waved in the place of a greeting and, from her other hand, a bouquet was placed at the feet of her calming brother. She found her favorite woven chair opposite to him and settled down for a minute.  
  
Bill had surrounded the placed with lush magical plants and even some mystical entities. Mabel, admittedly seeing no joy in monologuing with a dead body least of all trying to please that body with its favorite things, enjoyed the presence of her brother as she had come to appreciate the animated company of Bill Cipher.  
  
“-And you have to listen to this, Shooting Star. It’s brilliant! ##### will bring him back to life for sure. You see ##############” so Bill jabbed on and on, not once stopping to realize that he was speaking with a language human cannot understand. Perhaps Mabel should be glad she no longer needed to step up to the role of World’s Savior anymore since Bill Cipher had found himself a fresh obsession. Mabel thought back on the years and she spotted a change of mind, maybe not so fresh after all. She should be on her way home any moment now. Mabel doubted she had long left compared to Bill and she had grown to accept the death of Dipper.  
  
Bill seemed to have the reverse advancement in that regards. Some years ago, Mabel heard Dipper’s voice arguing with Bill’s only to realized they were both Bill conversing with himself. Some years ago, Bill started to form a familiar seemingly sleeping out of Dipper – much to Mabel’s dismal, to take him on “business trips”. Her vision once upon a time syphoned back to her mind fresh like yesterday and she’s worried it would come a little bit too soon for the sake of the human realm and for her own sanity. Still, she listened, and she would try to until the demon will float utterly alone in space once again.  
  
_  
  
Pacifica was charming in the ways one could be charmed. She spoked with great pride and malice yet she moved with grace and she wore beauty and elegance like a second skin.  
  
“The kid has been staring at your photo.” She said in an even voice.  
  
“Oh” Mabel halted her mindless flipping for a second. “I may have, uh, yeah.”  
  
“Very eloquent.” Mabel heard an eyeroll and so the topic was dropped. In that moment, her heart spotted buddings of gratitude for the years Pacifica had handled her grief and acceptance of Dipper’s passing. Mabel’s mind wandered back to the Shack where she knew for certain a maniac demon was edging on the verge of insanity that triumphed over all his other previous shenanigans. The years with Dipper helped her know a ticking bomb when she saw one. Mabel thought of a demon selling the world for a companion and she blurted out,  
  
“Don’t let me go alone.”  
  
Pacifica was not facing her. Nevertheless, unlike those years ago, the angle at which she stood gave Mabel a peak at her face. She saw a small smile curl at the tip of Pacifica’s lips and there was no warmth such as the feel of your companion’s hand on your own as you trek as slowly and clumsily as each other, together, through time and space.

**Author's Note:**

> lol Is there even anyone still in this fandom??? Please leave a small comment if you like! Tumblr said Comic sans made you write better and I thought what kind of dumb meme? But I tried anyway and wrote this in one go I'm very mad 10/10 fuming.


End file.
